* two bits of Comic-Con related news yesterday came right in the middle of my talking to a cartoonist for the Holiday interview series, so my update was to the point. The Eisner Judges are kind of fascinating this time around. Michael Cavna has the journalist role (he's also a cartoonist), Charles Hatfield of that very fine Kirby book (and inaugural category winner) is on board, Frank Santoro is the working cartoonist on hand (he's an educator and writer-about-comics, too, of course), Dr. Katie Monnin brings her formidable publishing resume to the group and Adam Healy of Cosmic Monkey Comics from Portland's ridiculously rich comics retailing scene makes five and John Smith, a longtime Comic-Con officer who if he's really responsible for the way registration has improved over the last few years deserves every honor that can be thrown his way, rounds out the crew. That's a lot of broadly talented people, and I look forward to seeing how they approach the job.

* nice update on Comic Con India concerning their grant program for unpublished work: last year's first recipient, Satya Police, will be ready for this year's Comic Con in early February. That will be coming out from Pop Culture Publishing. It looks like they hope to make part of the their award that the book is published at the next year's show, which makes total sense to me.

* we live in such amazing times for the recognition of comics as a legitimate avenue for personal creative expression that it takes a lot to make me do a double-take, or the Little Rascal jaw-drop. The current name of this forthcoming exhibit did the trick. That... that's like a joke we would have told in English class back in high school, only it's not a joke at all. In fact, that's likely to be a fine, fine show. We live in a future where only the comics dreams came true.

* finally, I hadn't noticed this before, but I guess from their latest e-mail flier that Asbury Park Comic Con is moving to an old convention hall there on the boardwalk. I believe previous iterations were at a bowling alley.